Monday, December 9, 2019

Report: Ring's Neighbors App Gives Away Far More Info Than Expected

A new report--published by Gizmodo on Monday--says that Ring cameras are giving a lot more information about users' location than users might suspect, with the locations of "tens of thousands" of cameras easily obtainable by researchers. Gizmodo said its ability to gather the potential locations of up to tens of thousands of Ring cameras "casts doubt" on Ring's privacy safeguards. Ring--now part of Amazon--sells doorbell and security cameras, and makes that footage available both to users as well as law enforcement. Gizmodo said it used information from nearly 65,800 individual posts shared by users of the Neighbors app, and used it to map out the proliferation of Ring video surveillance nationwide. There has been significant public scrutiny of Ring's willingness to help law enforcement access videos captured by its devices; a recent Vice article recently dug into Ring's founder, Jamie Siminoff, and the origins of the surveillance camera company and its network.